A Russian parliament member has blamed Friday's meteor shower on the United States, saying that it was testing "new weapons."

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a controversial Liberal member of Russian parliament, said Friday that the meteor was caused by a U.S. weapons test, adding that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had attempted to contact Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about the test.

“Those were not meteorites, it was Americans testing their new weapons," said Zhirinovsky. "John Kerry wanted to warn Lavrov on Monday, he was looking for Lavrov, and Lavrov was on a trip. He meant to warn Lavrov about a provocation against Russia."

Zhirinovsky is a figure known for being anti-Western and a nationalist. He was even described as racist, cruel, a "political clown" and a "radical right-wing boogie-man for the West" by newspapers like The New York Times and Der Spiegel.

On Friday, a 10-ton meteorentered the Earth's atmosphere traveling at 33,000 MPH and a sonic boom occurred around 9:20 a.m. local Moscow time before the meteor burned up. The explosion occurred over Russia's Urals region about 18-32 miles above the ground.

According to Chelyabinsk health chief Marina Moskvicheva, about 985 people in the city of Chelyabinsk alone required medical assistance.

Vladimir Stepanov of the National Center for Emergency Situations at the Russian Interior Ministry said about 270 buildings had been damaged due to the meteor, where most of it consisted of broken glass.

What are the DT readers going to do? vote differently, all what, 3000 of us half of which aren't even american?

It's not facebook that's the problem, facebook is obeying the law. You can be 100% sure they've got a bunch of lawyers somewhere which are recieving millions to make very sure of just that fact.

The problem is the incompetent idiots in charge that put $1 million in their personal bank account above the common good of the people. They could just as well make tax laws with no loopholes. It's very easy, look i'll show you:

That's it. No loopholes, no fuss, no muss. Everybody pays their percentage as described, you can even play around with the numbers for the right balance. But no incentives, no earmarks, no loopholes, no taxbreaks, no deductions, no way to exploit the system.

Now it's up to the people to vote somebody who will rewrite the tax code to include those words and only those words. And we all know, that's not going to happen. It would require somebody who is not a democrat or republican to be elected and it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens again.

Would that be a percentage of their total revenue, or their net income?

If you mean total revenue, someone who makes $100K but spent $500K making them would have to pay thousands that he doesn't have.

If you mean income, then someone who makes $100M just has to open a new company based in some taxless Caribbean nation, put one of their patents on the new company's name and pay them $100M for the right to use that patent. That means they have $0 income. The other company can't be taxed, because it doesn't have offices in the US. That is the big loophole today.

all sources of revenue in a year combined, then taxed to the percentage, then spread out over a year. The amount of tax owed monthly is updated once a year at the end or beginning of the fiscal year for ease, or at the request of the tax payer, whichever comes first.

In laymen terms all the money you can possibly get from everywhere, added up, taxed to your bracket, divided by 12, that's what you pay in tax per month next year.

If you make 100k a year and you spend 500k you don't have you're an idiot. You loan 500k, then you're able to service 500k worth of debt, then you're definitly able to finance tax over that 500k. If you aren't, you shouldn't have loaned that much and started smaller or find somebody with enough confidence to loan you more.

Because if you spend that 500k, that's 500k worth of materials or personell that needs to be transported around, using public facilities such as roads. Why shouldn't that be taxed?